Fiduciary Responsibility

April 18, 2018

As Baby Boomers retire daily and the American population continues to age, one thing becomes clear: public pensions are poorly underfunded. States and cities are facing an impending funding crisis that will burden future generations and taxpayers for years to come. Beyond this, pension fund fiduciaries are increasingly pressured by outside stakeholders to manage the funds based on political whims. While well-intentioned and admirable, pension funds should only be managed to create the greatest returns for fund participants. Detailed in this report is a clear explanation of fiduciary responsibility, a closer look at unfunded pension liabilities, and the politicization of pension funds. The final conclusion is clear: get politics out of public pension management.

The trend toward implementing ESG — environment, social and governance — has hit critical mass, and most investment organizations are at various stages of either installing or preparing these policies. But could the hype get in the way of an organization’s mission? That is a question that is on the minds of many people with a fiduciary […]

A funny thing happened recently in the left-leaning Golden State. In a board election last month, members of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or Calpers, the biggest pension fund in the nation, threw out their president and gave ESG investing a bloody nose. ESG is the increasingly popular asset-management style that applies environmental, social, and […]

Recently California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) – whose former board president, Priya Mathur, was discarded as a board member by a landslide vote of 57% to 43% – signed a letter asking the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to develop metrics for requiring listed companies to report on their compliance with environmental, social, and […]